In recent years, a quantity of global mobile terminal users grows rapidly, and a requirement for positioning a mobile terminal is ever increasing. Application scenarios of mobile terminal positioning services tend to be diversified, such as logistics management, emergency rescue, monitoring, and crime tracking.
Currently, a positioning manner frequently used in a mobile system is CID (Cell Identification) positioning that is also referred to as COO (Cell of Origin) positioning or CGI (Cell Global Identity) positioning. In a main technical solution, a geographical location of a mobile terminal is represented according to a base station to which a current cell of the mobile terminal belongs. According to a cell ID, a base station that represents the mobile terminal and geographical information of the base station can be learned, so that a location of the mobile terminal can be learned.
To improve positioning accuracy, some auxiliary transmission nodes may be deployed by using a coverage and capacity enhancement technology in a wireless network. These nodes are used to represent a location of a mobile terminal, so that the positioning accuracy can be improved. However, if nodes included in a positioning area share a same cell ID, a base station cannot determine, according to the cell ID, a node that forwards a positioning signal received from a mobile terminal, that is, when cell IDs are the same, the base station cannot determine, according to the cell IDs, a coverage area of a node to which the mobile terminal belongs, and cannot position the mobile terminal. Currently, there is no corresponding method for resolving a mobile terminal positioning problem when cell IDs of nodes are the same.